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FRIDAY, Sept. 11, 2020 (Healthday News) -- New research suggests that COVID-19 is far from benign when it strikes young adults: Once they are hospitalized, 1 in 5 wind up in the ICU and many need ongoing medical care even after they are free of the virus, scientists report. The Harvard University doctors reviewed more than 3,200 coronavirus cases where adults aged 18 to 34 needed hospitalization. Twenty-one percent ending up requiring ICU admission and 10 percent needed a ventilator to breathe. Overall, 2.7 percent of young hospitalized patients died. Another 3 percent required care in a post-acute treatment facility even after clearing the virus from their bodies. The proportion of young people who have contracted the virus has increased in recent months, as cities and states have...

THURSDAY, Sept. 10, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- You're feeling pretty darned sick -- headache, fever, fatigue, a cough -- but your COVID-19 test came back negative. What do you do now? Well, chances are good that you don't have COVID-19 if that's what the test says, according to experts. Labs that are testing for COVID-19 rely on what's called a PCR test, a slow and complex molecular scan that looks for the genetic material of coronavirus in samples that boasts very high accuracy. A negative result on this test shows there's probably something other than COVID-19 wrong with you, said Dr. Bobbi Pritt, chair of clinical microbiology with the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. "I know I have several work members and family members who had an influenza-like illness earlier in the year, and...

THURSDAY, Sept. 10, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- Infection control measures implemented in response to the coronavirus pandemic kept transmission of the virus to patients within a Boston hospital at nearly zero, according to a new study. The measures at Brigham and Women's Hospital included: masking of all patients, staff and visitors; dedicated COVID-19 units with airborne infection isolation rooms; personal protective equipment in accordance with U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommendations, and restricted visitor policy. In addition, employees and patients underwent daily symptom screening, and all patients were tested upon during admission to the hospital. "Our data show that in a hospital with robust, rigorous infection control measures, it is very much possible...

THURSDAY, Sept. 10, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- Adults process language on one side of the brain, but kids use both hemispheres, a new study suggests. The finding might explain why children recover more easily from brain injuries than adults, the study authors added. "This is very good news for young children who experience a neural injury," said researcher Elissa Newport. She's a neurology professor at Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington, D.C. "Use of both hemispheres provides a mechanism to compensate after a neural injury," Newport said in a Georgetown news release. "For example, if the left hemisphere is damaged from a perinatal stroke -- one that occurs right after birth -- a child will learn language using the right hemisphere. A child born with cerebral palsy...